Apple’s silence in China sets a dangerous precedent

A year ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation made an extraordinary demand of Apple. To get inside a dead terrorist’s iPhone, law enforcement officials wanted the company to create a hackable version of the software that runs all iPhones.

To many legal experts, it wasn’t obvious that Apple had a winning case against the request. But facing great legal and political opposition, Apple took a stand anyway. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, argued that the company had a financial and moral duty to protect its users’ privacy and security. He made clear that Apple would obey American law – but only after trying to shape the law.

The fight paid off. On the eve of a courtroom showdown, the F.B.I. rescinded its request. It is worth underlining this point: When Apple took a public stand for its users’ liberty and privacy, the American government blinked.

Yet in China over the weekend, when faced with a broad demand by the Chinese internet authority, it was Apple that blinked.

Apple openly and publicly buts heads with the US government but not with the Chinese government because of one very simple reason: Apple is more dependent on, and beholden to, China than on and to the US. Virtually everything Apple sells is made in China, and Apple has nowhere else to go.

For a company that always tries to strive for control, it really low-waged itself into a corner.

What are you guys talking about? Most of the core of Apple’s devices are made elsewhere. They are only assembled in China, and China doesn’t even make that much money off iPhone production. They probably don’t care that much either way.

A year ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation made an extraordinary demand of Apple. To get inside a dead terrorist’s iPhone, law enforcement officials wanted the company to create a hackable version of the software that runs all iPhones.

To many legal experts, it wasn’t obvious that Apple had a winning case against the request. But facing great legal and political opposition, Apple took a stand anyway. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, argued that the company had a financial and moral duty to protect its users’ privacy and security. He made clear that Apple would obey American law – but only after trying to shape the law.

The fight paid off. On the eve of a courtroom showdown, the F.B.I. rescinded its request. It is worth underlining this point: When Apple took a public stand for its users’ liberty and privacy, the American government blinked.

1. The government does not care about spying on terrorists. The government want to spy on the people, since conning the people is where the government gets their power from. Terrorists are just an excuse.

2. Like the government, Apple is willing to disrespect human rights if it is in their favor to do so.

3. The news often lies and is meant to shape our behaviour, not to inform us.

I’ll pretty much guarantee that the only reason the US govt backed off Apple was because they already had found how to unlock.

They did find a vendor that could hack it open (it was a less secure 5c, IIRC), but that’s not the “only” reason. It is itself two reasons: to save court costs, and because they didn’t want an unfavorable legal precedent. This way they get to save that battle for when they really need it.

Maybe this is like the Lavabit case. The government approached them and wanted them to fudge the VPNs and gave a gag order not to disclose it. So rather than comply they just ask everyone to remove all VPN apps. Conspiracy?

I can’t believe that some people are still stupid enough to believe this, “For a company that always tries to strive for control, it really low-waged itself into a corner.”

This is NOT about wages. This IS about having enough people to actually BUILD the product.

Apple has EXPLAINED this **many** times.

1) Does any company in the United States build enough components in the United States to start building ALL of the parts that Apple needs to build iPhones? Let alone their other products? No!

2) What countries DO build, in volume, anything near what is needed, at a technical level, what China does? Zero!

The United States stopped teaching kids in school the technical skills that they would need to go to a company that builds iPhones. And even if every kid in the United States that potentially would *want* to do this, they would be scattered all over the country. And there is not one city in the United States that could take on the added population that would be needed to build a factory to build iPhones, let alone other products.

3) What other countries have enough population in one, two, or three cities where people with technical training of any kind could change careers and be taught how to build iPhones?

India has a big enough population. But they, like the United States, does not have, right now, enough of their population to move all the production from China to them.

And guess what. If they did, they might act just like the Chinese government does now once they realize they have Apple by the private parts.

1) How many people does it take to build iPhones? Millions!

2) Is there any place in America or any other country that have Millions of people that can move to one city for the sole purpose of building iPhones? No!

The United States doesn’t have a big enough population. They, (I live near Seattle, WA) don’t have enough people that are technically trained to do this type of job.

In China, kids are trained to do these kinds of jobs starting in what is approximately equivalent to “high schools” in the United States. That means grades 9th to 12th when typically kids are 15 to 18 years old.

The United States decided decades ago that, as a country, we are not interested in training children for these types of jobs because American companies were moving all these jobs to cheaper places.

This used to be spread throughout the world. Then someone in the United States government changed a rule where countries could only have X amount of the imports coming into the United States. Once that rule was changed, China did a better job of promoting themselves and showing that they were training massive amounts of students exactly for the type of technical jobs that lead eventually to Apple factories (owned by other companies) to be in China.

Let’s say Apple figured out a way to get these companies to build iPhones in the United States, MOST of the production would HAVE to be done by robots. Leaving *maybe* 50,000 jobs for people to maintain the robots and not actually build the products.

And got God’s or anyone else’s sake. Quit saying it is about low priced wages. That ship sailed for EVERY SINGLE company that builds technical devices in volume. Go check out Microsoft and Google and every other company that builds in volume.

If you don’t know history, you tend to spew wrong information over and over again which is totally false.

Before China made the massive amounts of products that they do now, Japan was king. But back then there weren’t as many “gadgets” that are built now. TVs were the big things. And even now TVs are small in volume compared to cell phones. And Japan had problems making those in enough volume.

The only other alternative is that you are purposely trying to get people angry so they will post.

So you think Apple should be out of China? This means that they should pull all their manufacturing out of China.

Keep in mind that in most countries, the government does tell you what kind of job you are going to have. Such as manufacturing which is mostly gone from the United States.

Even if the Unites States was at it’s height with manufacturing where a significant percentage of the US population had a technical enough background to do the jobs as precisely as they are being done in China, there wouldn’t be enough people to fill all the jobs. In fact, there would be millions of jobs that would be left unfilled unless the US imported a whole lot of people with the technical skills to do this.

And where exactly would the United States import all these people from? And what would happen to the companies that depended on these people to manufacturing in their country that is suddenly without these employees.

It does not take 1 month or 6 months to train people to have the technical skills to precisely build something like an iPhone. And there is only a certain percentage of the population that has the mind (attention span and intelligence), motor skills, and eye site to do this type of job. The latter even if they were using microscopes mounted on glasses to try to see what they were doing.

Only a small percentage of people in China work in manufacturing jobs. Even then that is millions of people that work in that field.

Only India has nearly the same amount of people in their country. But India has not made it a priority, like China did, to train young people in technical skills. So the amount of people in India that could do this kind of job is not nearly enough to build a factory to build iPhones for the world. They will have a big enough problem building enough iPhones for their own country, assuming they have enough people that can do this.

What other country has over 500 million people? Zero

Population 2017 – Expected pop 2050

1 China 1,388,232,693 – 1,301,627,048

2 India. 1,342,512,706 – 1,656,553,632

3 United States. 326,474,013 – 398,328,349

4 Indonesia. 263,510,146 – 300,183,166

5 Brazil. 211,243,220 – 232,304,177

The United States has the 3rd highest population of the world. And we, the United States of America, do not have enough technically trained people to build all the iPhones, let alone all the other Apple products, in the United States.

And even if we did, you can’t have this spread all around the country because it takes billions of dollars for each building so that it has the technology to be able to build all the parts for every iPhone.

It is way past practical. Let’s say the United States suddenly decided that this is critical to the United States to move all of just Apple’s manufacturing to the United States. Suddenly there would be millions of people needing to move. And then there would be millions of jobs open with nobody that is trained to do these jobs. Plus the support infrastructure, like grocery stores, restaurants, electronic stores, malls in general, just aren’t there to support that big of a population in one place. There just aren’t enough people to do this.

Unless…

Unless Apple was able to convert all human manufacturing to robot manufacturing. Apple probably couldn’t do this either. Because there currently aren’t enough robots, not counting the ones that they need, but all robots of any kind added together as a number to do all the manufacturing by robots. It would take years to build all the robots that they need. And they would all have to be calibrated and maintained to work at a very high level in order to supply just the United States, let alone the rest of the world, with iPhones.

So, if the United States, which has only 23% of the population for China, could use robots to build all the iPhones, assuming that all the parts that are made in China are taken into account and everything is mined, processed, and built into products either inside the United States or in another country outside of China and Russia, the numbers for people just aren’t there.

NY and LA are literally on opposite corners of the United States. Not near each other. Combined they would only make up 12.3 million people would be around the 10th largest city. But they can’t be combined because they are on opposite sides of the US.

All the “biggest” cities in the United States are spread out around the country. Most of the cities in the US are well below the 100 largest cities in the world.

Again I ask, where would the United States build factories and who would be employed to work in them. You can’t just take people that have YouTube sites or work in most jobs in the United States and put them in a factory building iPhones. There just aren’t enough people –capable– of doing this. Let alone people that would –want– to do this kind of job.

Which leaves robots. And all that would do is move all the production from China to the US and that would take YEARS to do. In the meantime, the United States has borrowed a lot of money from China.

China could stop all exports to the United States. Yes their economy would crash along with the United States. We buy more from them than any other country. But they would be in a far better place than the United States as our banker would suddenly demand full payment of all loans.

Let’s say we don’t pay China. They demand full payment and we say no. Who would loan us money? If we had money we wouldn’t need to borrow it. Idiots in Washington DC have put us in a VERY bad situation where we owe lots of money to countries.

What could the United States do? Apple has 250 billion dollars in the bank and so do quite a few tech companies. They could seize them and take all their money but the companies themselves, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Facebook, etc., would cease to be. Not because the United States took their money. But because all the products these companies make, are made in China. And if China stops all exports to the United States then all these companies would have to start from scratch to rebuild themselves. Except that the United States took all their money so they could keep the country afloat.

Would they then use the few billions they have left to make loans to the tech companies they stole all their profits from?

Note: They wouldn’t just take 100% profits from all the big companies. They would also have to raise taxes on all the citizens of the U.S. causing a depression of major proportions.

It is a BS argument. Apple used to make all their devices in the USA. They could have continued to be ‘Made in USA’ if they wanted to. The only reason they moved to China is low wages, no unions and lax environmental laws. There is no shortage of labour, energy or materials stopping them from having factories in America.

If the US can produce 4 million cars and 8 million trucks a year they can easily build the factories and create the supply chains to make consumer electronic devices. It is simply a matter of will.

I am an Apple hater (I do, check my posting history) but this *is* bullshit, comparing apples vs. oranges. What the FBI asked and what the Chinese asked are very different things so of course the answer is different.

PS: wait until USA will ask the same VPN ban and will see Apple reacting the same as now.

Everyone saying that Apple could only manufacture in China is only partially right. Granted China has better suited workforce and regulations to promote lower wages and higher output. Chinese have bent over backwards to manufacture Apple products to the points having very low returns, mostly caring about job sustainability.

If there is one company that has the resources to turn this around is Apple, it will take a lot of time and truckloads of money, anyone saying Apple does not have the money or capacity to do so is delusional.

The truth is that Apple’s focus has not been in manufacturing for the longest, and mostly will never be again. Too much trouble, low margins, resource intensive, you name it. Us gets the RD and expensive fancy HQ, some marginally strategic manufacturing in the US etc etc….China gets the production end of the deal, with all the problems with it. For effs sake, Apple is just about to stop abusing tax evasion tactics, it wont be benefiting the US population with significant increase in jobs anytime soon.